Scope

• In every language, every dialect, every social subgroup, every profession, there are common:
  • Ways of constructing sentences.
    • For example, common sentence constructions in English include:
      • noun-verb
      • article-noun-verb-adverb
      • noun-verb-adjective-direct object
  • Words and phrases and abbreviations
    • Those common to a culture, community, or social group
      • bloody (Anglicism)
      • know what I mean (hip-hop, rap)
      • heavy heart
      • geek speak
    • Those common to a job, profession, or avocation.
      • diabetes mellitus (medicine)
      • charm (a characteristic of the sub-atomic particles called "quarks")
      • home run (baseball)
      • Society for Creative Anachronism
• For any subject, there is a probability that certain words or phrases will occur within :
  • Close proximity to each other
    • Example:
      • If you are looking for articles on the breeding of horses in Kentucky, you might find:
        • Kentucky has numerous horse breeding facilities.
        • Kentucky has numerous facilities for the breeding of Arabian horses.
        • Trotters are bred on small farms throughout the remote counties of Kentucky.
          • Note that there is not use of the word "horse.
  • Within the same sentence, paragraph, or page
    • Example:
      • An article on Macintoshes will probably have words like "Mac" and "performance" in the same paragraph as "G5" (the microprocessor) and "processor" and "2GHz" (the clock speed of one G5 microprocessor.
      • In an article on research on the thermal analysis of houses for leaks may have the words "heat," "wall," "windows," in relatively close proximity to each other. How close is the problem.

Consequently:

• To search effectively, you need to:
  • Have a general idea the way language is used:
    • In any social group.
    • In different professions.
    • In different fields or avocations
    • In various types of publications, including;
      • General magazines and newspapers
      • Professional journals
      • Subject-specific magazines
      • Academic journals
  • Know or find the words (and synonyms) appropriate to the subject you are searching for.
  • Know the available proximity operators for a database and how to use them.

Proximity operators

• Proximity operators are letters and/or symbols that enable the searcher to specify how close to each other she/he expects selected terms to occur.

List of operators

Function/Command	Format	Examples, Notes
adjacent in order entered	(w)	computer(w)systems Finds phrases such as "computer systems.
near in order entered	(#w)	computer(6w)systems # can be any suitable number
adjacent in either order	(n)	search(n)example Finds "search example" and "example search"
near in either order	(#n)	dog(9n)cat Finds "cat .... dog" and "dog .... cat"
within same field	(s)	teacher(s)student Both terms must be in the same field in either order
within same descriptor pair (heading-subheading)	(l)	solar(l)energy i.e., heading(l)subheading